Adventures in the Music Business (part 1 of many)
Alert readers of Fast Company will note that I’ve been spending a fair amout of time looking at and thinking about the music business. A few reasons:
1. I love to listen.
2. I think it’s fascinating to watch an entire industry crumble, and to think about how it might be different.
3. In the midst of this uproar, I’m starting a record label.
More on the label as it develops over the next few months (because of blogger, you’ll want to read this backwards if you’re not keeping up… from the bottom up. This is part one, naturally.
As I wrote here a month ago and in Fast Company last week, the industry is based on scarcity. Scarcity of shelf space, of radio spectrum, of hot acts and hits. And now, the world in conspiring to make all of those scarce things not-so-scarce any more. With niche markets and Limewire and Amazon and home 24 track studios, all the old stuff goes away.
What takes its place? More on that (read above) in a moment.